Emilie Townes to Lecture

Friday, February 21, 2014

The Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School will host the Murray and Burroughs Lecture on Women and Religion at on Feb. 24 with guest lecturer Emilie M. Townes, dean of Vanderbilt University Divinity School and professor of womanist ethics and society. The title of the lecture is "Living Beyond the Fold of Old Wounds: Womanist Liner Notes in the Diaspora." The public lecture will take place at 4 p.m. in Goodson Chapel.

A Durham, N.C. native, Townes has been a pioneering scholar in womanist theology, a field of studies in which the historic and current insights of African-American women are brought into critical engagement with the traditions of Christian theology.

Named in honor of womanist/feminist leaders Anna Pauline Murray and Nannie Helen Burroughs, this public lectureship features women theologians and religious scholars whose work and ministry emphasize the critical intersections of race, gender, and class as they relate to the transformative uplifting of church and society.

Townes is the author of the book Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil. Her other books include Breaking the Fine Rain of Death: African American Health Care and A Womanist Ethic of Care, In a Blaze of Glory: Womanist Spirituality as Social Witness, and Womanist Justice, Womanist Hope. She gave the Jill Raitt lecture at Duke Divinity School in 2011. Audio is available on iTunes U.